Long Slow Whisper, Part 1
by Ken Sprague
Summary: A lone hunter and his irksome ghost bear a heavy secret, and a heavy hope, as they seek out the trail to the Deep Stone Crypt hidden deep beneath the gleaming ice of Enceladus. Their mission began in vengeance so many worlds ago. Can the light be trusted to honor the Traveler's secret promises?


Mournful winds, bitter cold and heavy with the threat of the oncoming storm stirred the weed-choked lanes of the long forgotten highway. Grit and dust scoured the burned out and rusted husks of centuries old automobiles, smashed and piled like so many toys in the aftermath of a child's tantrum. Clouds the color of livid bruises roiled and stirred along the western horizon, their imminent menace punctuated by occasional flashes of purple lightning. Peals of thunder shook the ground itself, and all but the bravest of animals took shelter in the face of the promise of nature's bared fury.

The ghost hovered in place, purposefully, scanning the vehicle carcasses strewn along the potholed road. The curious geometric intricacy of its shell began to shift, the rearmost series of polygonal vanes rotating in excitement and the single "eye" in the center of the alien object darting about, seeking the chemical trace it had been created to discover in the war-torn and long-dead city. Intense pulses of etheric energy throbbed from the ghost, conferring with the unthinkably massive data troves kept by the Traveler, comparing the specific composition of organic residues to the quantum records kept by the enigmatic, planet-like machine floating silently above the ruined landscape of what was formerly Moscow. With the arrival of an incoming tide of coded information came the final confirmation. The ghost had found the one it sought, at long last. It could finally begin to serve the purpose for which it had been forged and quickened to consciousness.

After only the briefest of pauses, both halves of the ghost's shell began to rotate counter to one another feverishly. The ghost, as they were known to be called, seemed to shiver on an atomic scale; an unusual shimmer of the space between the particles that formed its physical body. A bright cone of glowing light erupted forth from the center of the singular eye, spreading out to bathe in light the remnants of a single human skeleton. Dry bones, long stripped of the flesh which connected them shuddered and rolled, bringing themselves into the correct positions they had held in life, so very long ago. Deep within the ghost, the consciousness which enervated it watched with rapt fascination. In this, the ghost was but a channel…the energy of the Traveler poured through it in an all-consuming flood. One of the innumerable traits of the godlike machine intelligence was the ability to fix nearly anything that had been broken or corrupted. For several long minutes the raw energy of the Traveler enveloped the remains, sketching the dimensions of the previous form of the living being. Meanwhile, local elements in the air, the dirt, and the very land itself were being subjected to brutal alchemy, all while being carefully placed and woven tight around the bones of the human it had discovered.

Gradually, the form was built of organic flesh, and the mysterious chemistries of life raged with subtle reactions once again. The heart of the new construct, a strong and resilient human heart, twitched and began to beat. The freshly constructed brain roared into consciousness, processing sensory input with the ease of something that had never tasted the oblivion of death. Lungs filled with cold, fragrant air drank deeply of gusting winds as eyes the color of pale gold struggled to focus and track these newest sensations…the eyes of the newly reborn.

The voice of a machine, brassy and quavering with the fluctuations of magnetic interference spoke to him, he realized. Blurry, vague shapes struggled to resolve themselves into recognizable images as the ghost floated directly before him.

"Eyes up, Guardian."

Deep within the smothering blanket of the cold night, a solitary figure struggled to slip free of the bonds of sleep. The skin of his face, toughened by the elements of multiple worlds, lined and scored by the duties and horrors that were the lifeblood of a Guardian. Eyes of the golden hue of sunset opened to the oppressive darkness of alien skies. Enceladus had been a lavish resort during the Golden Age. A pristine wonderland of perpetual winter with a breathtaking view of majestic Saturn forever in the crystal clear sky. Cold, snow covered, and exclusive, Enceladus was once a jewel in the Sol system. Frequented by the ultra-wealthy, populated with the impossibly beautiful, and owned by the most powerful individuals in species history. History, however, proceeded to run on, and the Collapse brought Enceladus and her many delights crashing into abandoned disrepair.

One corporation alone had managed to survive the fall of Enceladus. Tucked deeply within the glacial ice of the small moon, a facility constructed and fortified by a fringe branch of Clovis Bray Incorporated continued to hum with feverish activity. The facility itself was impressive. Sprawling caverns and mazelike tunnels had been hewn from the heat of the ice, and then lined with a meter-thick layer of fullerene Hyperdiamond. Power taps had been sunk through the ice to the hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, providing more heat energy than the facility would possibly require. Local organics were harvested from the liquid ocean beneath the surface of Enceladus, processed into foodstuffs and various textiles, and arrays of nano-forges handled the creation and assembly of mechanical or computational components. It was a self-secure, self-sustaining research facility concealed by nearly a mile of trillion-year old ice, and masked by the glare of being situated on the brightest reflective object in Sol space.

Deep in the heart of the Clovis Bray facility on Enceladus, development of technological wonders had soldiered on ceaselessly. New, more reliable methods of encoding human consciousness and transferring it to a stable, machine-based system had come about in the bowels of the Machine labs. Strange and wondrous alchemies gave rise to miraculous new alloys and composites, leading to the conception, in turn, of the Exo program.

Quagmired in political debate on Mars, where Clovis Bray constituted the majority of financial influx, the presentation of the Exo program was at best unpopular. Many voices would say that the creation of Exos was tantamount to treason against humanity's latest God-thing, the Traveler. To gift the human species with an exodus into potentially immortal machine bodies of unimaginable strength and swiftness was to tamper with the edict of the Traveler, the looming darkened specter of a Golden Age gone to rot long ago. The Traveler, as it happened, only resurrected those it chose to.

Feigning submission to popular pressure, Clovis Bray made a public spectacle of signing a moratorium of continued research into the Exo project. Like so many agencies peppered throughout human development, Clovis Bray had lied through their proverbial teeth. Not only did the experimental research into Exo sciences continue…it achieved success beyond anything the research collectives had ever dared to dream of. Exos had been a plan in one moment, and a reality the very next. To be sure, there had been countless mishaps and issues in the earliest days of the Exos, leading to continual deletion and rebooting of individual minds to achieve optimal stability. For this problem, and for reference, an Exo would retain the name of their choosing followed by a number, denoting the running version of the persona. It was likewise discovered that the human consciousness could be expected to withstand up to fourteen revisions. It was only tragic degradation that would reveal itself in the living, sentient Exo, and only to its ultimate demise.

Jorn watched with tears streaming from his stinging eyes as the reflected light of Saturn lit the skies of Enceladus like a fire from beyond the horizon. The atmosphere of the tiny moon, such as it was, was perfectly transparent and as cold as frozen steel _. At least_ , Jorn mused silently, _it was still_ _breathable_. Strapping on his bandolier and rifle, and securing his helmet in place with a satisfying whine of life support systems springing to life, the hunter broke camp and began to walk briskly to the east, carefully measuring his steps against his counted pace. One of the greatest skills Jorn had ever learned was the technique of the pace-count. A system used by the martial forces of humankind, by counting his steps and weighing their number against a known distance, he could navigate to spitting distance of any objective he sought. Once, long ago, he had spied a string of beads in the black and olive colors of tactical forces, and he recalled that they may have been some kind of abacus for that specific task, but they were but artifacts in a crumbling museum moldering away under the weight of centuries of neglect and disinterest.

Humans, it appeared, had moved on. At the height of the Golden Age which followed in the wake of the arrival of the Traveler in Martian space, humankind had embraced globally minded cultural ideals. The Traveler gifted humans with fantastical technologies, eliminating sickness and disease from the world, and opening the stars to human exploration for the first time. Health, wealth, and plenty were the hallmarks of the Golden Age. No human would go hungry but by choice. No man or woman would perish in infirmity. Truly, mankind had attained the pinnacle of the utopian dream, and arrogantly ignored the waiting teeth of hubris. The day the Traveler went silent and dark, the human race tasted an old and primal fear it had not imbibed since the dawn of recorded history. Fear of the Darkness had come screaming and gibbering from the depths of darkest species nightmares.

Just over the ridge of iron-hard ice, Jorn's enhanced optics deciphered seismic data received through sensors integrated into the soles of his rugged, armored boots. His measured footsteps provided the shockwaves, and his helmet displayed a brightly colored estimation of the buried entryway to the covert facility for which he had spent the last twelve years of his existence searching the solar system high and low. With a summoning gesture of an open palm, empty of its burden, atoms swirled and rushed to materialize his ghost, Ravi. The electric prickle of a high density transmat field tickled the hairs of the hunter's arm beneath the layers of armor and textile of his environment suit, and Ravi coalesced into being, hovering directly above Jorn's open palm. With an eruption of dim light, Ravi swiftly scanned the environment in all directions, taking immediate stock of its surroundings as well as his Guardian's vital status and mental state.

"What is it, Jorn? Don't tell me you've actually found it?" Ravi blurted, amid a cavalcade of faint beeping and squelching bursts of static. "You've found the Crypt?"

The hunter's expressionless, reflective face mask revealed nothing to the dumbfounded ghost, and the diminutive sprite whirled and gyred in a display of agitation. Ghosts were the personal envoys of the Traveler itself. When the hostile occupation of the Fallen had breached earth's outmost defenses, humans had become fractious, tribal, and ripe for the cull. The Collapse had almost immediately led to war and holocaust orders of magnitude more horrific than those of ages past. Survivors of the global calamities enacted by mankind upon the living, bountiful Earth banded together in small, well defended enclaves. Many years later, with a sense of finality not unlike the drawing of the last breath of life, the long-silent Traveler sent forth the ghosts. One thing was known about the strange, alien machines. Ghosts made Guardians from the ruins of the dead.

Hard, cold light slammed through the frigid air of the entrance hatch, glinting through the dust raised by the negative pressure surge created by the vacuum sealed doorway. Shockingly cold alloy grating made up the floor of the room. A few long forgotten crates lay unmolested along the wall ahead, the drab tarp covering them draped in a curtain of dust and hoarfrost. Jorn's suit sampled the atmosphere within the entryway, determining that the local atmosphere was quite breathable, and free from microbial pollution. His helmet display measured temperature and radiation gradients, as well as gravitational field data, all reporting an environment ideal for human life functions. Jorn wisely resisted his urge to remove his helmet. _Better safe than sorry_ , he thought.

As the hunter moved to a narrow hallway to the right, dim lights embedded in the hyperdiamond ceiling responded by casting a weak yellow glow throughout the passageway. Jorn shouldered his scout rifle, his second most trusted associate, and crept quietly along the hallway until he reached an enormous alloy door, its two mammoth halves abutting in the center of the heavy frame with only the barest hint of a seam. Beside the door, set within the frame was an access terminal. The angry red status light of the terminal display told the Guardian that the way was barred. The door was locked.

"Got it, Guardian," whispered Ravi as he materialized before the terminal, his glowing blue eye scrutinizing the mechanism as his scanning lights peered deeper within the lock itself.

"Honestly, I have no idea who these people thought they were going to keep out of here with this kind of locking circuit. They may as well have piled furniture against the door." It said, sarcastically.

Jorn gave a deep sigh of long suffering to his ghost's incessant chatter, which Ravi took as a cue to fire one last shot at the hunter.

"If I'm annoying you, Guardian, just tell me."

The hunter gave no visible response, absorbing the mild sting of the retort as he set his mind to the opening of the great door, and what might lie beyond. Everyone knew, just as well as Ravi knew, most Guardians were mute. Jorn was one such Guardian.

After several moments of tension, the huge, silvery door began to part slowly from the center, groaning noisily as the halves retracted into the sides of the frame. Jorn tensed, fully expecting armed defenses on the other side of the door, but there was none. There, before him, was the empty carriage of a large, sturdy elevator. _Just my luck_ , Jorn thought. _I'll be the duck, and this will be my barrel_.

Jorn stepped into the elevator and thumbed the only control in the elevator car. With yet more grinding and groaning, the heavy doors sealed shut. A brief flicker of the light within the carriage accompanied the lurching sensation of falling as the elevator began its descent into the facility known to precious few as the Deep Stone Crypt.


End file.
